All Japan’s annual Champion Carnival, the yearly heavyweight round-robin tournament (equivalent to NJPW’s G1 Climax tournament) starts on April 4 (you can find the full schedule with block matches here).
This year, both blocks have expanded to nine participants each, up from eight last year. The participants are:
In the A Block:
Kento Miyahara
Shuji Ishikawa
Zeus
Yuji Okabayashi
Yuma Aoyagi
Dylan James
Atsushi Aoki
Ryoji Sai
Gianni Valletta
B Block:
Naoya Nomura
Suwama
Jake Lee
Joe Doering
Daichi Hashimoto
Takashi Yoshida
Yoshitatsu
Joel Redman
Sam Adonis
There is a strong outsider presence in this tournament. Okabayashi and Hashimoto represent Big Japan Pro Wrestling, as the storyline rivalry between these two companies rages on. Yoshida comes from Dragon Gate, and Redman and Adonis are both freelancers, with Adonis best known for his work in Mexico, and Redman as a former NXT Tag Team Champion (as Oliver Grey with Neville).
On paper, the A block is seemingly the stronger of the two. It features the current Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion Miyahara, along with two former champions in Zeus and Ishikawa. Plus, of all of the outsiders in this tournament, Okabayashi has the strongest pedigree as a former BJW Strong Heavyweight Champion. James, Sai, Aoyagi, and Aoki (who was a late replacement for the injured Kengo Mashimo) are all good complimentary wrestlers who, under the right circumstances, can have some great matches. Valletta is beyond unproven in AJPW as a singles wrestler, but the floor for the quality of his matches is acceptable given who he will be in the ring with half the time.
The B Block has a lot of question marks. Doering and Suwama are the veterans of this block, who will represent stability throughout this tournament. Nomura has been on the run of his life the last few months, with his unsuccessful Triple Crown title challenge last month (which was a match of the year contender that everyone should seek out) as the cherry on top, but can he maintain that level of consistency throughout the entirety of a tournament like this? Lee is someone in desperate need of a few breakout performances. Since returning from injury last year, he has shown signs that he can step up into the main event picture, but still has not developed that consistency. However, he showed a lot of promise on the last tour, culminating with him and Koji Iwamoto winning the vacant All Asia Tag Team Championships. Fingers crossed for him. The rest of the block is a matter of wait and see. Hashimoto is a former BJW Strong Champion, but is notoriously inconsistent and struggles to connect with the crowd. Yoshitatsu will have one or two very good matches and tease us all into thinking he is more than just an adequate tag team wrestler. Yoshida is a victim of being in the wrong company for his style. Maybe stepping into an AJPW ring will benefit him and let him shine a little bit more. Redman and Adonis are literally out of nowhere and there should be no reasonable expectations for them in this tournament.
The Schedule
The problem with both blocks being kind of top-heavy is that there are a lot of shows on the schedule with only one, or sometimes zero, marquee matchups.
Night One (4/4) has three matches with strong implications for how the blocks will play out. Realistically, in the B Block, it will come down to Suwama, Doering, Nomura and Lee. So, on night one, we will see Lee vs Nomura and Suwama vs Doering. The results of these matches could shape the standings until the final night of B block matches (4/28), where we will see Nomura vs Suwama and Lee vs Doering. Normally, in a round-robin tournament in wrestling, you can tell who will still be alive by the end of the tournament. So, it is good that AJPW is not trying to subvert our expectations by having someone other than those four guys battling it out to decide the block.
The A Block is in a similar situation. On the final night for that block (4/25) the big matches will be Zeus vs Ishikawa and Miyahara vs Okabayashi. It is not uncommon for a strong outsider to come in to a situation like this and beat the champion. Last year, Shingo Takagi beat Miyahara in the tournament as an outsider. Unfortunately, there was no follow-up to this because Takagi jumped to NJPW as soon as his contract ran out. But, Okabayashi is not in danger of going anywhere any time soon, so do not be shocked to see him pull off the upset here and advance to the finals. Other interesting matches for the A Block are: on night one, Ishikawa and Okabayashi clash in a hoss fight for the ages. Their tag teams (Violence Giants for Ishikawa and Strong BJ for Okabayashi) put on two classic matches this year. A singles match between these two should be no different. On April 9, there is the much anticipated match between Miyahara and Zeus. They had two excellent matches last year over the Triple Crown title, with the latter of the two, with Miyahara regaining the title, being a legitimate match of the year contender.
There is a lot of dead space in the middle of this tournament, unless you are really excited for Joe Doering to beat the snot out of the two new foreigners Redman and Adonis, which I absolutely am.
Predictions
2018’s tournament was so great, that it will likely be hard to top. The big outsiders in that one were Dragon Gate’s Takagi (who was low-key the MVP of the tournament) and NOAH’s Naomichi Marufuji, who went on to win the tournament after stellar matches with Miyahara and Jun Akiyama. Akiyama is another one who will be greatly missed in the tournament this year. He is approaching 50 years old, but still managed to have one of the best tournaments of anyone last year.
The A Block I think is a bit easier to predict than the B Block. Since the Big Japan invasion of All Japan, Big Japan stars have been beaten repeatedly. They could use a big win here, so I predict Okabayashi to beat Miyahara on the last night and advance to the finals.
A Block Winner: Yuji Okabayashi
Traditional tournament booking usually says that the winner of the tournament is usually not in the same block as the champion. This is done mainly because someone can beat the champion in the block, then someone else can win the finals, setting up two future title matches instead of just one. So I am going into this prediction with the mindset that the winner of the B Block should win the whole thing.
We have already established that this block should come down to Nomura, Lee, Doering and Suwama. I think we can cross Suwama and Nomura off that list, since they each challenged for the title unsuccessfully recently. So that leaves Doering and Lee. With Lee, he is still sort of a question mark. He has had some good matches, but also some stinkers where he showed no fire. If I were holding the book, I would not go into this tournament with the expectation that Lee is definitely going to grow into a main-eventer over the course of the tour. Doering, on the other hand, is a safe pick. Last year, he lost the Triple Crown title to Miyahara right before the Carnival, but then defeated him in the block stage. He beat the current champion clean and had nothing to show for it. He is a respected veteran of the promotion who has not done too much at the top of the card over the past year, plus he is the most popular guy on the show any time AJPW runs Korakuen Hall, the venue they will be at for the block finals and the overall finals. I predict Doering to beat the brakes off of Lee on the final block night and advance to the finals.
B Block Winner: Joe Doering
Now we have our final: Yuji Okabayashi vs Joe Doering. As I previously mentioned, Okabayashi does not need to win this match. At this point, he would have defeated the champion to get here. He is guaranteed another shot, should Kento still be holding the belt when that time comes.
This is Doering’s moment. It will not be as big as when he won the Triple Crown less than a year after developing brain cancer, but still, in storyline, this is huge for him. Getting to fight off the nasty invading Okabayashi, who at this point will have basically run through everyone, in front of a (hopefully) packed Korakuen that will adore every moment of these two behemoths beating the heck out of each other, with their guy coming out on top.
Champion Carnival 2019 Winner: Joe Doering
If you want to follow the Champion Carnival, you can subscribe to ajpw.tv for 900 yen a month and get all the big shows live, plus many of the shows on VOD.
